A season in the Arctic is a great test of character.
One may know a man better after six months
with him beyond the Arctic circle than after a lifetime
of acquaintance in cities. There is
something--I know not what to call it--in those
frozen spaces, that brings a man face to face with
himself and with his companions; if he is a man,
the man comes out; and, if he is a cur, the cur
shows as quickly.
-Admiral
Peary

One's first impulse is to dismiss this book as just another quickie
attempt to cash in on the Endurance
craze, but the story of the Karluk and its crew is quite amazing in
its own right and first time author Jennifer Niven does a terrific job
telling it. One year before Ernest Shackleton and Endurance set out
for Antarctica, Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, working under the
auspices of the Canadian government, assembled an expedition intended to
prove that a continent lay beneath the Arctic ice. On June
17, 1913, the H.M.C.S. Karluk, captained by Robert Abram Bartlett, set
sail from British Columbia with a complement of 25, including Stefansson,
sailors, scientists, and Eskimos (including a mother and two young daughters),
plus sled dogs and a cat. Within the six weeks the ship was frozen fast
in the ice north of Alaska and Stefansson, taking three men and several
sleds with dogs, had abandoned the rest of the Canadian Arctic Expedition,
setting out for the mainland to continue his exploration.

For the next five months, the Karluk drifted westward with the ice floe,
before finally being crushed and sunk on January 11, 1914, just east of
Wrangel Island, which lies north of Siberia. With the crew facing
the predictable difficulties caused by brutal weather, a diet of pemmican,
seal, and the like, snow blindness, etc, and no reason to believe that
anyone even knew they were still alive, let alone where they were, Bartlett
and Kataktovik, one of the Eskimo guides, set out across the shifting ice
for Siberia to get help. Meanwhile, with the departure of Bartlett,
the remaining crew splintered into rival camps and added to the struggle
with the elements was an atavistic struggle against each other, ending
in betrayal, thievery and maybe even murder.

The story of who survives and how and of the feats that survival requires,
makes for compelling reading. Stefansson is the main villain of the
story, his inadequacy as a leader beginning with his purchase of the Karluk
at a bargain price, even though it was clearly not suited to ice breaking,
and ending with his doctoring reports of the expedition to cast aspersions
on Bartlett while portraying himself in a favorable light. Bartlett
on the other hand, the Ice Master of the title, emerges as a truly heroic
figure. There are plenty of other heroes and villains--one of the
more interesting of the former is Seaman Hugh "Clam" Williams, whose nickname
is more than justified when he stoically sits through having his frostbitten
toe cut off with a pair of shears--and myriad instances of courage and
cowardice.

The reader can't help being torn between questioning the common sense
of the men who followed the obviously incompetent Stefansson and admiration
for the fortitude that many of them displayed in the face of disaster.
And just as you're coming to grips with this quandary, the author provides
a helpful endnote where she reveals that various survivors fought in WWI,
returned to Arctic exploration and one even joined a colonization party
that Stefansson later sent to Wrangel
Island, with predictably tragic results. It all makes for thrilling
reading, side by side with alternately troubling and uplifting glimpses
of the deeds of which humans are capable when they are pushed to their
limits.